Java

Core i5-760 (TB Off)

Core i5-2500K @2.8 GHz (TB Off)

Δ

Average

124

142

15%

This is another test nicely optimized for multi-threading. And the boost is already 2.5 times higher than in compiling. Seems sort of random again. But according to stats we've already collected for this benchmark, Sandy Bridge should be most likely faster.

Web browsing

Core i5-760 (TB Off)

Core i5-2500K @2.8 GHz (TB Off)

Δ

Google V8

146

167

14%

Sun Spider

196

225

15%

Average

171

196

15%

Numbers are rather average for this review.

Audio encoding

Core i5-760 (TB Off)

Core i5-2500K @2.8 GHz (TB Off)

Δ

Apple Lossless

113

127

12%

FLAC

124

141

14%

Monkey's Audio

127

144

13%

MP3 (LAME)

135

156

16%

Nero AAC

130

148

14%

Ogg Vorbis

136

157

15%

Average

128

146

14%

Gains range from 12% to 16% (which is humble for this review), although we use a wide range of codecs, proprietory and open-source, all from different developers. Perhaps, the thing is that audio encoding benchmark is one of the most optimized for multi-threading in our test method? Then it means that Sandy Bridge offers considerable gains only in single or few-threaded software.

Video encoding

Core i5-760 (TB Off)

Core i5-2500K @2.8 GHz (TB Off)

Δ

DivX

128

138

8%

Mainconcept (VC-1)

131

146

11%

Premiere

137

149

9%

Vegas

228

258

13%

x264

132

145

10%

XviD

137

157

15%

Average

149

166

11%

These results seem to be an indirect proof of the assumption above.

Games

Core i5-760 (TB Off)

Core i5-2500K @2.8 GHz (TB Off)

Δ

Batman

124

128

3%

Borderlands

126

134

6%

DiRT 2

100

111

11%

Far Cry 2

176

192

9%

Fritz Chess

134

136

1%

GTA IV

156

156

0%

Resident Evil

122

130

7%

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

104

107

3%

UT3

146

150

3%

Crysis: Warhead

122

132

8%

World in Conflict

154

168

9%

Average

133

140

5%

And again it's a total mess without any traceable trends. Still, you can see that Sandy Bridge doesn't prodive any gains in GTA IV. The entire gaming test has demonstrated the lowest performance boost so far.

Conclusions

Core i5-760 (TB Off)

Core i5-2500K @2.8 GHz (TB Off)

Δ

Average

138

157

14%

Well, we didn't hope this test would introduce some incredible revelations. But don't worry, a much more detailed review of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture is in the works. It will offer much new and interesting information as well as results of low-level architecture tests. As for now, let's formulate a few more or less reasonable hypotheses based on today's test results.

The Sandy Bridge architecture has been overhauled. We can't say how radically, but it's much more efficient. It offers 14% boost on average, L3 cache being smaller by a quarter, and other things being equal.

Even knowing more details on the new core architecture hardly allows making valid assumptions as to how the performance of specific applications will change.

Even though we tested the processors in a multitude of benchmarks, there wasn't a situation when Sandy Bridge was slower than Lynnfield, core clock rates being equal.

With much caution we can say that in our tests Sandy Bridge more often demonstrated higher gains (over 20%) in tests poorly optimized for multi-threading.

Maybe, just maybe, the previous assumption is related to the smaller L3 cache. So, theoretically, the efficiency of the new core in handling multiple threads may be bottlenecked by such cache size.

The general conclusion is a bit banal: Sandy Bridge is much better than the previous core. Not as much as Core 2 (Conroe) was better than Pentium 4, but it's still a larger step forward in terms of architecture than Nehalem compared with the last incarnations of the aforementioned Core 2.